Losing my mom and my grandma are two of the hardest realities I'll ever have to face. But I look at my career path, my friendships, and the unexpected professional turns I've taken, and one thing is clear: In life and in death, they've taught me that our existence is too damn short to not bet on your version of happy. This is mine.

Whether your mother is alive or has passed, or whether you have or had a positive or challenging relationship with her, I believe it's important to honor the woman who gave you life-- the woman you were connected to through an umbilical cord.

We live in a new world and one with great change and opportunity. Given all that can be in this world of technology and opportunity, here are the messages I thought about on this Mother's Day that I would like to pass along to my 21st century daughters (and my 21st century daughter-in-law).

All of the emotions I had compartmentalized that day --the pain of being a motherless mother, of raising my child without his grandmother -- came pouring out with that devastating balloon blow. I lost my mom and couldn't even hold on to the freaking balloon I wanted to release in her memory.

The fact that terms such as the "Woman Card" are part of a likely presidential candidate's vocabulary fills me with nearly unspeakable dismay. The suffragists of the Portrait Monument didn't fight for this.

Mother's Day. Despite the commercial cheesiness; most mothers look forward to 'their' day. If their child is in grade school, mothers will be receiving with love macaroni necklaces and homemade cards shiny with glitter and glue.

I didn't know I could parent as myself and didn't have to try to fit into some kind of role that was set up before me, some kind of not me, some kind of failure I wasn't required to even try for. I didn't know that kids see parents for who they are, not for who they're trying and failing to be anyway.